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Since the Supreme has no interval, no self-differentiation
what can have this intuitional approach to it but itself?
Therefore it quite naturally assumes difference at the point
where Intellectual-Principle and Being are differentiated.
Intellect, to act at all, must inevitably comport difference with
identity; otherwise it could not distinguish itself from its
object by standing apart from it, nor could it ever be aware of
the realm of things whose existence demands otherness, nor could
there be so much as a duality.
Again, if the Supreme is to have intellection it cannot know only
itself; that would not be intellection, for, if it did know
itself, nothing could prevent it knowing all things; but this is
impossible. With self-intellection it would no longer be simplex;
any intellection, even in the Supreme, must be aware of something
distinct; as we have been saying, the inability to see the self
as external is the negation of intellection. That act requires a
manifold-agent, object, movement and all the other conditions of
a thinking principle. Further we must remember what has been
indicated elsewhere that, since every intellectual act in order
to be what it must be requires variety, every movement simple and
the same throughout, though it may comport some form of contact,
is devoid of the intellective.
It follows that the Supreme will know neither itself nor anything
else but will hold an august repose. All the rest is later;
before them all, This was what This was; any awareness of that
other would be acquired, the shifting knowledge of the instable.
Even in knowing the stable he would be manifold, for it is not
possible that, while in the act of knowing the laters possess
themselves of their object, the Supreme should know only in some
unpossessing observation.
As regards Providence, that is sufficiently saved by the fact
that This is the source from which all proceeds; the dependent he
cannot know when he has no knowledge of himself but keeps that
august repose. Plato dealing with essential Being allows it
intellection but not this august repose: intellection then
belongs to Essential Being; this august repose to the Principle
in which there is no intellection. Repose, of course, is used
here for want of a fitter word; we are to understand that the
most august, the truly so, is That which transcends [the movement
of] Intellection.
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